


remember this if nothing else

by kuro49



Series: television!AUs [9]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013), Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Gen, the Penny Dreadful!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s an enigma, he’s not completely human, and they are looking for a father’s son.</p>
<p>Or Raleigh Becket thinks they’re looking for a boy. But that’s where he is wrong, what they’re looking for, <i>hunting</i> for, is a monster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember this if nothing else

**Author's Note:**

> If you aren't watching [this show](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Dreadful_%28TV_series%29), you really are missing out, it gives me the most delightful creeps. Short story short, Penny Dreadful is a delicious mashup of all the great classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Grey, alongside of werewolves, murders, exorcism, and those great, dark things.
> 
> In this version, this is the AU where Chuck is Mina Harker, Dracula's bride (trust me, I laughed for a long time at this), Mako is Vanessa Ives, Raleigh is Ethan Chandler, a marksman that might also be a werewolf, and Herc and Stacker are two versions of Sir Malcolm Murray (Mina's father). Yancy is Brona Croft (I will leave you to read up on who this is and what this implies). Not featured in this fic but I've thought about are: Newt as Victor Frankenstein, Hermann as Caliban (Frankenstein's first monster), and Tendo as Dorian Grey.
> 
> Please don't ask me what I was on when I thought this was a good idea.

There is no prologue, or an epilogue.

There is little but the pungent stench of fresh blood and week-old decay leeching from the wooden floorboards that are creaking beneath the soles of their shoes.

“You think we’re looking for a boy.”

Eyes that are looking more primal than human with flicks of neon blue in the iris.

“But that’s where you are wrong, that’s where my father and his are wrong, what we’re looking for, _hunting_ for, is a monster.”

When they are coming at them, nails sharp enough to tear through the skin of their throats, teeth bared like they are looking for blood, Raleigh shoots like the guard dog that she asks him to be.

“Remember this if nothing else, Mr. Becket.”

There is nothing but the dark.

                       

Hercules Hansen comes to him, as an old friend, rain running from his temple to his chin. His clothes have long been drenched, rain water looking like he’s been trailing in from the sea instead, sand at the bottom of his shoes, salt over his lips. His eyes are the same blue as that first time he’s followed him into the jungles of Africa, grass standing as high as their full height.

The sadness though, that is different.

“Charles—"

“He’s gone.”

Stacker Pentecost doesn’t need to turn around to know that it is his daughter, Mako Mori standing at the base of the staircase, shaking with all the shadows of the world gathered in her eyes.

“Chuck’s been taken.”

She repeats herself, and if anyone of them has seen a hurricane, they would know that this must be the start of one.

 

Charles Hansen is a boy she grows up with, their fathers halfway around the world and going further still. There have never been any secrets between them but there have always been lies too. His hair is the colour of hay in the sun, his eyes the ocean and his anger deeper and darker than anything she’s ever witnessed.

 

There is dust in the air where they are sitting up against the headboard of that bed, just big enough for one and barely good for two but just good enough for the Beckets.

Always have been, always will be.

Raleigh dips a corner of the handkerchief in the basin of water he has set up next to the bed, wets it and drags it across his brother’s mouth, cleans the blood from his lips, the sweat from his skin.

“Hate to have you see me like this, Rals.”

Neither wants to be reminded of Yancy Becket’s mortality but the collection of blood-soaked cloths sitting on the wooden floorboards by the bed already does that without fault. His rasp of each word is barely a scratch over their proverbial wound.

“Hate to not see you at all, Yance.”

And they would both be laughing if it didn’t make Yancy cough, and when he coughed, he coughed up blood. Raleigh just smiles and presses a kiss to the top of his brother’s head, keeps the man in his arms, warm in his embrace, and safe.

Raleigh Becket doesn’t tell his brother of the night work he’s signed himself up for. Doesn’t tell anyone about the slip of paper with an address and the instructions of a meeting as soon as it gets dark. Doesn’t mention the young woman with her dark eyes, dark hair, and the wisps of blue like the ocean waves of the coast back home.

 

He doesn’t talk about the blood in the water or how cold Alaska can get. (Doesn’t talk about how it’s just the Becket brothers now or how cold Jazmine has been when he’s got blood in his teeth, her eyes losing light quick.) Yancy’s taken care of him all his life, this is him returning the favour, this is him wishing, praying, begging for anyone to answer when he says _help_.

 

Sir Stacker Pentecost has his oldest friend out of his wet clothes and sitting in the chair by the fire. The flames cast an orange glow around the room, throwing strange shadows across their hands as he offers him a glass of his good bourbon.

“Hercules.”

He faces him, hears the distinct crack of thunder outside. Stacker takes a sip and watches as Hercules looks to him, physically preparing himself for what must be said, ugly words like counted lashes across their backs. Hits a parent will take for their child if it means he could be saved because neither one of them are naïve enough to think that something won’t be dying by the end of this.

“Say we find Charles, say he can’t be saved.”

“I love him enough to kill him, is that what you want to hear, Stacks?”

Stacker shakes his head, touches his hand to his friend’s, “There are greater evils out there than murdering your own child. Where we come from, some people can’t be saved.”

The smile over Hercules Hansen’s face is a small, pitiful thing.

“Did you forget, I was there with you.”

 

There is a lot of wrong in the world they have been witnessed to, and just as much they don’t flinch away from even when it is done to them. Hercules has had the same question spit at his face, men with skin like his that asks the most foul of things, _why treat him like an equal?_ He isn’t beneath hurting men like them in reply, even when it is Stacker’s hand that lands on his wrist, a wordless please even when there’s already blood on his hands.

 

Mako Mori finds Raleigh Becket shooting at play pretend targets for a crowd. A cowboy with his pistols drawn and his hat tipped against the rare afternoon sun. She finds the marksman sitting behind the show owner’s trailer, cleaning his guns, oil on his hands, waiting for his next show.

“From the way you shoot, Mr. Becket, I imagined you differently.”

Her dress is black, and she makes for a rare kind of beauty that is hard to find in this town. Her short hair is cut short and sharp like it’s done with a blade. Her words like an omen with the way it twists around on her tongue.

“Better or worse?”

And it is with a practiced ease that he puts both pistols back into his holsters. She doesn’t answer his question, just holds out her hand for him to take. When he does, she tells him this.

“Mako Mori.”

Raleigh distinctly remembers that her silhouette is a mirror of her as she turns.

 

She has seen futures she wishes she could forget, she has seen Charles’ mother dies before she does, warns Sir Hercules Hansen that he mustn’t leave for this trip or it’s the last he will see of his dearest Angela. When it happens, Hercules Hansen doesn’t learn of the news until she is already in the ground.

When Mako asks that Raleigh Becket indulge her, she asks that he picks a card, any card, and doesn’t tell him that his brother will be dead before the month ends.

 

She tells him he can call her Miss Mori, introduces him to a man she calls her father, Stacker Pentecost with skin as dark as the night, and a man named Hercules Hansen with hair the colour of fire. It’s a rag-tag team of what he hopes will do what it is setting itself up to do.

“What’re we looking for?” Raleigh asks when she leads them away from where the streetlamps light the way, cobblestones still wet beneath his shoes from the drizzle that never seems to stop.

“M’ boy, Chuck.”

Raleigh quirks his head back when it is Sir Hercules Hansen who answers, the man looking like he’s stared death in the eyes and just about spit in it if not worse.

“Stay close, Mr. Becket and keep your gun at the ready.”

Mako leads them to a building by the docks, shadows of ships he and Yance have only been on once thrown over the narrow path they’re on, hidden from view. She has her hand on the door, pushing in, warning at the tip of everyone’s tongue like they’ve all seen worse things than the ones he’s done.

“What you’re about to see aren’t exactly things anyone should see.”

Raleigh isn’t about to doubt her.

 

When his eyes adjust, it isn’t only darkness that he sees.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
